The Pacific Appeal was the leading African American newspaper on the West Coast during the early 1860s. A newly-published set of eight antislavery poems from the journal's inaugural 1862 volume captures the sense of expectancy within the African American community for the imminent end of US slavery. These poems include the work of James Madison Bell, a San Francisco plasterer, brickmason, and poet. Read more...

Civil Liberty: A Sermon

Noah Porter (1781-1866) served as a Congregational minister in Connecticut. He was involved in various moral reform causes and published sermons from 1813 forward. Porter's 'come-outer' theological views appear in his Two Sermons on Church Communion and Excommunication (1853). The present sermon on civil liberties argues that an antislavery position derives from natural law that guarantees freedom as a divine right.